Things are not so different across the pond with Ascii's.
Hell, you've seen the domains being reported at DNJ, i doubt a lot of them get any overture, let alone type-in.
Many domains tend to sell for a multiple of PPC earnings. In 10 years time do you think the baseline will move to some other metric?
It already has..
...No good domain portfolio has changed hands since BuyDomains and that business would have sold for considerably more than the rumored amount had the company’s former owner been engaged in selling advertising alone, vs selling his names. Prior to that there was ‘Name Development’s’ sale to Marchex (Yun Ye transaction). No large, high-quality portfolios have changed hands since. Other sales have been smaller or split-portfolios consisting of good names interspersed with trademark issues. Individual names often sell for 100 years PPC.. No high quality domainer would dream of selling a portfolio worth potential billions to a third party for 10-12X PPC revenues. PPC is a flawed multiple because it works off a rev-share. If you buy a portfolio for 10X and it is on a 50/50 rev share (after “cost of services” through Google Adsense) that means you sold your portfolio for 5X what Google could make with it. Maybe 3X if you exclude the amount Google shaves for smart pricing. That is so insanely cheap. Only a fool would give names away like that. If I were selling I would pick a walk away number (the youtube style multiple) or I would sell names individually. The breakup value of large portfolios will be in the billions if they aren’t already.
quote courtesy of Aaron Wall / Frank interview
http://www.seobook.com/archives/002242.shtml